Campaigners in a remote West Highland community have reacted in anger to news that a nurse hired to provide emergency cover lives 50 miles away.

Residents on the Ardnamurchan peninsula, near Mallaig, have also been told that the nurse in Ballachullish will have to take a three-hour road trip, if a ferry is cancelled due to poor weather.

Emergency cover is currently provided by two nurses in the community, but the system is being scrapped when one of them retires in a fortnight.

Local resident Jacqueline Crosbie said: "They're saying that it's down to numbers but the thing is at the end of the day we're sparcely populated.

"There's not a lot of us but we still face the same risks as anybody else, we've still got the same chance of falling seriously ill you know that doesn't seem like a good enough argument to me."

Gill McVicar, of NHS Highland, said: "Modern health care professionals want to have a work/life balance.

"Especially when they're living in remote and rural communities they need to have a private life so it's very important that whilst acknowleding the fears of the community we make sure that our servies there are sustainable."

A statement from NHS Highland issued on Thursday afternoon confirmed that the nurse, Avril MacGregor, hopes to move to west Ardnamurchan "in the near future".